


O My Heart

by GoddessOfGanon



Category: Violet Evergarden (Anime)
Genre: Angst, F/M, First Kiss, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-20 11:42:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15533472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoddessOfGanon/pseuds/GoddessOfGanon
Summary: Violet and Gilbert talk through the dark underside of their separation.





	O My Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Since a rather rude comment was left on my writing blog, I should warn this is in fact a romance fic, and if the age you perceive Violet to be makes you uncomfortable and unable to enjoy this work, then this is a good place to stop reading.  
> As Violet is in her early twenties in the novels, that’s how I always viewed her in the anime. Regardless, I have little control over how my fics are interpreted, but I ask if any comments containing constructive criticism are in fact constructive, and not cruel.  
> Thank you :)

_ “Violet, is something wrong?” _

Gilbert watched Violet beneath a drawn brow, feeling much as if he'd swallowed a stone this afternoon and it had just hit his stomach. It had been earlier that day that the two were reunited after several months, the veil of his presumed death lifted. When they’d found themselves face to face, Violet had melted into his embrace as he'd offered it. He’d held her as she became pliant in his arms, and they sank to their knees midway through the door frame, her knees hitting the hardwood of the front porch and his sinking into the plush carpet of the foyer. Not long after, however, had she grown stiff, as if realizing it had been a stranger with his arms around her.

Gilbert had entreated her inside, and following a late supper, the pair retired to the parlor, where they sat side by side on the sofa in front of the fireplace, which crackled with a vibrant life, as though Violet's long awaited presence served as added kindling. As Gilbert had little to share from his time spent in recluse, Violet’s work as an Auto Memories Doll supplied most of the conversation. She had spoken not, as Gilbert had feared, of names and locations as though she were reciting a report. Instead, she regaled him with stories of people and places with a recognizance of fulfilled experience she had not possessed as a soldier in his army. He'd kept himself hidden from her for such purposes, and a long-held sigh was released once faced with the remarkable progress of the woman he found himself enraptured by. Although he’d had to correct her each time she’d punctuated a sentence with  _ Major,  _ urging her to say  _ Gilbert  _ instead, and she ended up dropping the use of titles altogether as a result.

Gilbert had been content-more than content, beside himself-to sit back on the sofa and listen to her continued stories of her new job, her new life. He’d slipped his hand into hers at one point, his left hand, that he’d lost in the war, absentmindedly stroking the plate of her knuckles with his metallic thumb. She had yet to notice.

 “Violet?” He prompted once more, when she seemed not to have heard him. She’d trailed off, midway through recounting her assignment to transcribe a new script for a famous playwright. “Are you feeling alright?”

She seemed to become alert, then, her shoulders lifting like a automaton doll coming to life as she turned to face him. “I do not understand what I am feeling.” There was a present quality of strain to her voice. She trailed off before picking back up again. “I understand what I do  _ not _ feel.” She weakly raised her right hand, intertwined with his, off the sofa. They’d both shed their gloves- there was no need for them, when they shared that prosthetic feature.  “I cannot detect any physical sensation in my hands. Do we not have the same prosthesis model? Is yours tuned to a higher sensational degree than mine?”

“I . . . no, it is not.”

“Then, you cannot feel my hand in yours? As I cannot feel your hand in mine?”

“I . . . can’t feel anything.”

A lie.

Though there was not the physical weight or texture of her hand in his, he had been as keenly aware of the contact as he was the fire in the hearth warming his body, or the support of the sofa which kept him seated upright. He had envisioned the moment they’d be side by side again with inexhaustable yearning, and cannot deny that this absolution of the moment absorbed him wholly, as if a magnet were fixed to each of his nerve endings, drawn to her only. 

If she were to run from him, and hide in any room of the manor, he would find her. He would  _ feel  _ her, and he would find her. Violet’s presence in the room was such as a bright light, inescapable even if he were to turn away, cover his head and shield his eyes. His heart sunk at the thought that she did not feel he reflects that same light. That she could lose him so easily. He chastised himself for becoming so occupied with this dreamlike detachment, as if he had been watching their exchange pass from outside of his own body. Instead, above, he hovered over that caress of  _ someone’s  _ thumb over  _ her  _ knuckles and wondered, achingly, how it would feel to touch bare skin. Flesh, not metal. He could find someplace safe, her shoulder, her cheek, though he withheld, unwilling to interrupt the machinations of her thoughts that she was struggling to translate to word. 

“I felt for a moment, just then, that I was back in my boarding room, in Leiden. I would sit at my desk and complete a report about the day's assignment. I would type them as I’ve spoken aloud just now, and I’d imagine you reading them, just as you’re listening now. But . . . you grew quiet, and I couldn’t feel your hand, and it felt like it always did then. I’d imagine you, and I would have to make myself remember that I was alone.” Her brow narrowed, the line of her mouth tightening. There was sorrow in her eyes, chagrin in her posture, and her grip on his hand was limp, as if she couldn’t care to hold him to her. 

“Aside from the two weeks I was hospitalized recovering from our last battle, I have spent each day of the past several months searching for an answer to tell me what your last words to me meant. ‘ _ I love you.’  _ Due to my position as an Auto Memories Doll, I have been witness to different variations of love, be it between a brother and sister, a parent and child, or a couple to be married. Within each relationship, I learned something new, something that made this love different from the one I saw last. Yet, were I called to summarize what I learned in one sentence, I could.” Though she did not seem to realize, her voice had begun to warble, her eyes water. She looked steadfast into the fire. Her eyes must have been burning. 

“Saying to someone that you love them means that you are going to stay with them. Yet, you, Major, left. You told me you loved me, and you left me. That is what I do not understand.”

Gilbert’s head dropped in shame, deflating with a sigh. He could feel Violet’s eyes trained on him, in the same manner one feels the noontime sun bearing down its heat in the summer. “I acted in what I though was aligned to your best interests, Violet. I longed to give you a normal life. Apart from the war, the constant running. I realized, and it was the most painful realization that I’ve come to yet, that I could not be a part of your life when you saw me only as your major. I am unspeakably sorry that the grief you suffered at my expense was false. But I knew all the while, you would never be truly free, with me. I am the war.” He cleared his throat, as the rise of emotion within his chest threatened to overtake him. “I  _ was,  _ at the very least. I am not sure, quite, who I am to be now. I'm not sure I have to right to be who I'd like, regardless."

From his side, Violet whispered, “You’re Gilbert.” And finger by finger, her hands curled around his.The tension in her body left her, aside from that hold. “And you must live, as I must live as well.” Through the clamp in her throat she continued. “I . . . was recently taught what it means to be lonely. What the heaviness in my heart meant. I realized at that moment that I would rather die than live without you. When I was told you were missing in action, I wished very deeply that the same fate would befall me. But I couldn’t die, because you had ordered me to live. I could not work around this contradiction. But I had to, because in taking your final orders, I freed myself from having to take anyone else’s. Now I am Violet, Auto Memories Doll. And I will go anywhere to meet your request.”

“Anywhere?” Gilbert lifted his head, meeting her unwavering gaze. She had presented an inexplicable draw, the ardent hope of her words spoke to a dream he’s been having of late. While her words pierced him,  _I wished very deeply that the same fate would befall me,_ they healed him also. He finds himself inching towards her, unbidden. There was a new light in her eyes, the light they both lived by. He wished to remain as close to it as possible. 

_ “Anywhere.”  _

Their foreheads met. They could both feel it. Their breath mingled, like the currents that combine to make a storm; his heated, hers cool. “There are times when parting is inevitable.” Gilbert sighed, felt his throat tighten. “But in my definition of love, know this; I will always return to you.” His squeezed her hands to punctuate his point, though he knew she would only feel the faint tug to her wired tendons. “And if you need to feel me, tell me.”

Violet held his half gaze, suspending a question between them. The answer settled like a chill, dusting both their cheeks with a highset blush. She moved with pristine stillness, the kind that often got her mistaken for a doll, and closed the breadth of distance between them to lay a kiss upon his eyepatch. Her lower lip grazed his cheekbone by only a fraction, yet the ghost of sensation was enough to render his breathless, a roseate flush drawn up his neck. _A kiss._ “What do you know of kisses, Violet?” He dared to whisper, though feared he may shatter the air of intimacy surrounding them, which hung suspended there, frozen and fragile as glass.

Violet pulled away slowly, considering. “I know they can be warm, and cold. Their main purpose seems to be to express affection, but they also serve to comfort, and form a bridge of sorts, between two people. That is what I’ve gathered, from my experiences.”

Gilbert pitched a brow in question as a shudder ran through his heart, slicing through its chambers. He hadn’t expected her answer would come from her  _ experience. _ Jealousy is an ugly creature, he knew this, but its head reared within him for a brief, turgid moment. “And whom have you kissed before now?”

“A young girl kissed my cheek as I was departing from an assignment. She had believed me to be a doll- not an Auto Memories Doll, but one like a child’s plaything, made of porcelain. She was quite surprised to find my cheek was flesh.” Her lips tipped into a smile-did she know that she was smiling?-at the memory of young Ann, who, at eight years old, would have received the first of fifty of her mother’s letters penned by Violet’s hand. Gilbert watched the rememberance play out on Violet’s face with a smile of his own, relief sinking into his chest that the kiss she had spoken of hadn’t been romantic in nature. His right hand, the one supremely capable of gathering sensation, raised to her face. His thumb curved along her cheek, sweeping over the spot where the young girl’s kiss may have been laid. 

“I also kissed the forehead of a soldier as he lay dying.” Violet continued. Gilbert’s thumb froze mid-caress. “He had been stationed in Ctrigall, and commissioned a Doll to write a letter home to his parents and a woman named Maria, whom he had developed romantic feelings for. He had been mortally wounded by the rebel faction before I arrived, though I addressed his wounds and wrote the letters. I . . . watched as the life drained out of him.” Here, Violet’s eyes took on a glassy distance as she retreated into the memory, so unlike the story she told last. When her eyes closed so saw that snowed-in cabin, the stain of blood on the hardwood. Gilbert pulled her close to him, to comfort her as a kiss might, though she seemed not to notice. “He asked me to hold his hands, which I did. He was shaking, and speaking aloud to the girl, Maria, though she was not there. He told her ‘I love you.’ That is when I kissed him. However, I was not thinking of him at all. Is that selfish of me?” 

She raised her head from Gilbert’s chest, her eyes becoming alert and pleading. “I do not think that is selfish at all.” Gilbert murmured. He could scarcely hear himself over the echo of his heart pounding from within his chest, beating still, despite his previous doubts. “You had managed to escape the war, only to have yourself thrown back into it. War leaves imprints on a person, whether they realize them or not. I’ve heard some refer to it as ‘shell shock.’ You likely reverted back into the mental state of when you were fighting, which prevented you from focusing on this soldier. His battles were not yours, after all.”

Violet nodded in dismissive indication that she heard him, though if she agrees remains unclear. Taking a single steadying breath, she drew herself upright and continued without break. “I delivered the letters to his family personally. When I did, they did the most peculiar thing. They  _ thanked  _ me. They would not accept my apologies for letting him die, instead acting as though I had brought Aidan himself to their doorstep. How could they reserve their anger like that?” A newfound urgency broke through to her tone, her gaze sweeping back to Gilbert with the expectancy that he knew precisely why this abstruse family had refused to cast stones upon her and her letters.

Gilbert merely shook his head, his brows drawn in a sort of mournful consternation. “Violet, you continue to be the most selfless person I have ever known.”

_ “Self-less?”  _ Violet mulled over the new word, allowing for the taste of it, the meaning, to settle. “Yes, I think you are correct. I hardly ever thought of myself in the past. I only thought about you.”

Gilbert sucked in a breath, and all at once the inches’ distance between them felt like a chasm, a void that must be closed. He raised both hands to cup her face, smoothing the few loose strands of flaxen hair that had escaped from her braids.

“Violet?” She nodded mutely. “Have you ever exchanged a kiss on this lips?”

Her eyes widened. “From my understanding, a kiss on the lips is reserved for lovers.”

“Yes, it is.” Gilbert breathed, sweeping his thumb over the cleft of her lip with a feather like touch. Violet’s crystalline blue eyes widened further, then narrowed, in understanding, though she did not draw away. She allowed her eyes to slide shut, shutting off the light from within. She lifted her face slightly, as she’d seen couples do, either as passerbys on the street or in the picture shows her colleagues liked to sometimes go to after work. Her heart struck a heightened pace, like a train pulling out of its station. She wondered how fast it'd have to beat to shoot from its tracks, straight from the thin walls of her chest.

Gilbert’s hand slid to her chin, his fingertips just grazing her jaw, tilting it slightly and drawing her lips towards his by fraction, slow enough that she would have time to withdraw. Her stillness kept them align, however, and his lips descended upon hers. Their lips moved in a gentle waltz, exquisitely in tune to their partner. All impressions unreliant to this moment slid away; the crackle of the fire replaced by the hallow and intake of their breathing, the rustle of clothing as the remaining space between them was cleared. 

They parted once at a loss for breath, feeling rather unsteady in returning to the atmosphere they’d both felt they’d broken apart from. Time resumed in a steady fashion, the grandfather clock in the corner of the room keeping up pace as though it had never stopped.

“Gilbert,” This time she spoke without need for correction. Her hands curled into his shirtfront, holding him to her. “Could you say those words to me, one more time?”

His smile told her he will say those words however many times she’d like.

_ “Violet, I love you.”  _


End file.
